We're number 173! We're number 173!

Okay, we're not that bad, we're only at the bottom of "affluent" world nations, not ALL nations, but for all those folks who prefer their freedom fries to French family-friendly social policy, a new McGill-Harvard study highlights (lowlights?) how poorly the United States compares to other industrialized nations, even to many nations in the developing world, in terms of workplace policy aimed at assisting families. The report, The 2007 Work, Family, and Equity Index: How Does the U.S. Measure Up?, offers more evidence that U.S. rhetoric on "family values" runs sadly out of step with everyday U.S. family realities.

Some depressing findings include:

• Out of 173 countries studied, 168 guarantee paid maternal leave, with 98 of these countries offering 14 or more weeks of paid leave. The U.S. provides no paid leave for mothers. Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea are the only other countries studied that do not guarantee leave with income to mothers.
  


• Sixty-five countries grant fathers either paid paternity leave or paid parental leave, with 31 of these countries offering 14 or more weeks of paid leave. The U.S. guarantees fathers neither paid paternity nor paid parental leave.
  


• At least 107 countries protect working women's right to breastfeed and the breaks are paid in at least 73 of these countries. The U.S. does not guarantee the right to breastfeed, even though breastfeeding is demonstrated to reduce infant mortality one-and-a-half to five-fold.
  


• At least 145 countries provide paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 127 providing a week or more annually. The U.S. provides unpaid leave only for serious illnesses through the Family & Medical Leave Act, which does not cover all workers, and has no federal law providing for paid sick days.
  


• One hundred and thirty-seven countries require employers to provide paid annual leave. The U.S. does not.
  


• At least 134 countries have laws that fix the maximum length of the work week. The U.S. does not have a maximum work week length or a limit on mandatory overtime per week.
  


• At least 126 countries mandate that employers provide a day of rest each week so workers are not required to go for long periods without a day off. The U.S. does not.

Why contemporary labor policy is suffering so in America is a complicated question, but the collapse of U.S. unionism over the last 30 years and the concurrent fine-tuning of the federal-corporate merry-go-round must share in the blame. While other nations move forward with structural improvements on the work-family balance, U.S. workers have returned to a struggle for basic wage-hour and family-leave standards that had been hard-won generations ago. Unhappy days are here again?

Heck, even the Wobblies are making a comeback.